Various access technologies, such as digital-subscriber lines (DSL, like ADSL or VDSL), passive optical networks (PON), and others, provide a high-speed data services from the local exchange to the customer premises. A home network (HN) is one way to distribute broadband services over the customer residence. In current practice both wireline and wireless HN solutions are available. For both wireless and wireline solutions, HN nodes communicate with a residential gateway (RG) to receive broadband service. The RG, in turn, is connected to the access network termination at the customer premises (CP), called “CPE”. CPE is the source of broadband services distributed over the residence. Besides distribution of broadband services, HNs communicate to each other to provide various private high-speed data applications inside the CP, such as connections between multiple TVs and a digital video-recorder (DVR), between components of security system, private file transfer system, etc.
A typical home contains several types of wiring such as phone wiring, coaxial cable lines, electrical power lines, or some type of dedicated high-speed data wiring (e.g., Cat 5). Many existing HN solutions utilize one type of wiring. For instance, HomePlug technology deals with power lines, MOCA technology deals with coax cable, and HPNA (Home Phone-line Access Network) technology originally addressed phone line wiring but was recently amended to use coax cable as well. Other existing HN solutions utilize wireless connections (e.g., WiFi technology, based on IEEE standard 802.11). However, it is widely accepted that neither existing wireline or wireless HN solutions can simultaneously serve a sufficient number of nodes inside the home and fail to provide sufficient throughput to deliver the required variety of modern services, including high speed applications like HDTV to multiple points on one end and multiple low-bit rate automation devices on the other end.
To increase the throughput of HNs, it was proposed to simultaneously employ all available types of home wiring (phone lines, power lines, coax cable) to arrange multiple sub-networks (or network domains) so that each sub-network can utilize the transport capability of a specific type of wiring, while the whole HN will utilize all the available media. In the same way, it was also proposed to arrange multiple wireless hot-spots inside the house (wireless sub-networks), inter-connected by wired media, to significantly improve the coverage of the wireless access. With an appropriate combination of wire-line and wire-less sub-networks, high-speed broadband services can be delivered to any point inside the house.
HNs containing multiple sub-networks that communicate over wireless or different types of wired media are known in the prior art. In the prior art, these sub-networks, which may be referred to simply as “domains” herein, can share the same wiring or utilize different wiring, but are routed in close proximity from each other. In such a HN, signals from one domain will propagate into other domains, causing interference between communicated signals (crosstalk). This interference usually erases both domains' signals, and retransmission is required.
Therefore, one issue with these existing HN solutions is that domains may interfere with each other, mutually reducing each other's performance. If transmission signals from one domain penetrate to another domain with considerable power, some signals in the victim network can be completely erased due to interference.
Another issue in existing HNs is how to efficiently allocate services and resources among the domains. Thus, services and communication resources to those domains should be set to meet the quality of service (QoS) requirements of each service in the most efficient way.
In addition, prior art sub-networks are arranged in a way that signals used by HN nodes in one domain are not supposed to propagate to another domain. Following this definition, different domains either use different types of media (e.g., one over coax wiring, another over phone-line wiring, and another over power line wiring), or use orthogonal signals over the same medium (e.g., different frequency channels over coax.) With this approach, there is still an issue with crosstalk between different types of media. For example, a power line can cause crosstalk on phone lines, or one frequency channel on a coax cable can cause crosstalk on another channel of the coax cable (due to poor out-of band signal attenuation). This crosstalk may cause distortions and even erase signals transmitted over the victim medium, thus reducing the bit rate and impacting the QoS.
To avoid the issue of interference and/or crosstalk, it was proposed to provide coordination between signals of different domains. However, these methods of coordination rely on mutual “politeness” of all sub-networks, assuming none of the subnetworks is taking more bandwidth than is needed to provide QoS. This approach is insufficient because channel characteristics between nodes of the HN are highly dynamic (i.e., change as new devices are turned on or switched off and due to noise variations). As a result, each domain will tend to reserve maximum bandwidth resources to provide QoS in case channel characteristics deteriorate. Thus, the politeness concept may not work if the total available bandwidth resource has relatively little margin. If the total available bandwidth resource is less than the bandwidth requested by a domain, it is not clear how a compromise can be settled.
Thus, these problems, as well as other problems, could be resolved by coordination devices and methods which resolve conflicts between network domains (sub-networks) to achieve the best overall result.